Let’s all stop being coy and fess up, shall we? The truth is, even those of us who work with cookbooks, write about cookbooks, collect cookbooks — heck, even write cookbooks ourselves — don’t actually cook from cookbooks. At least not nearly as frequently as we would like to/promise ourselves we will/tell others we do.

As food has morphed ever more into a pop culture fixture, cookbooks — with their lush photos, their provocative prose, their tempting, come-hither recipes — have become the porn of the food set.

Which sounds flip, but actually is significant. For if we still love cookbooks — and by all accounts we certainly seem to — but no longer see them primarily as a source of dinner inspiration, our selection criteria also must change. A good cookbook back in the day was defined mostly by quality of the recipes alone.

That remains vital, of course, but hardly critical. Today, story often trumps recipes. A good many books in this category may not even have recipes, or at least none a home cook is expected to follow. Not too many years ago, that would have been comical. Today? There’s an audience for that.

So it is with this mindset that I made my picks for the best food books of 2013, the ones I would hope to get or gift.

■ “Smoke & Pickles” by Edward Lee (Artisan, $29.95)

Lee earned his fame on Season 9 of Bravo’s “Top Chef,” but he earned his credibility for his brash, yet respectful reimagining of Southern cuisine. A Korean-American who grew up in New York, Lee’s only connection to the South was a road trip. But he fell in love with the culture and its food, and it shows in his cooking.

Like his Louisville, Ky., restaurant 610 Magnolia, his first cookbook, “Smoke & Pickles,” is a delicious amalgam of his cultures. Pulled pork gets sauced with bourbon and black bean paste. A T-bone gets marinated with lemon grass, Asian sesame oil and peanut oil. Anyone who loves Southern cooking — or anyone who claims to “know” what Southern cooking is — will want this book.

■ “The Taste of America” by Colman Andrews (Phaidon, $29.95)

Andrews has succeeded at something that shouldn’t have been successful. He has written a reference book that reads like a storybook. His anthology of 250 classic American foods — some ingredients, some products — is a fascinating way to taste our nation’s collective menu. From Goo Goo Clusters to boiled peanuts, he tells the story of America through its food.